New England Winter
Icicles longer than I am tall, hanging menacingly overhead like a cold Sword of Damocles. Plowed snow piled over two stories high. Temperatures so frigid I am wearing long underwear to bed, with a down comforter, flannel sheets and two blankets. Old Man Winter can be a real mothertrucker.
Since just after Christmas, the Northeast and New England has been under siege. Every week - sometimes twice a week - a new storm has rolled in, dropping snow and temperatures and trapping us in the house. Go to New York for a little shopping? Not when it is under two feet of snow. A quick trip to Boston for some of the best Chinese dumplings on the East Coast? Not when the temperature is in the teens, my friend.
Relentless is the only word I can think of. The picture above was taken almost two weeks - and about 20 inches - ago. And if it isn't snowing then the clear night sky is giving birth to achingly cold temperatures. Last week it dropped to minus 10. This week we may escape with only minus 2.
Yes, it can be beautiful, amazingly so. But that is why man invented the camera. We've all gotten our pictures, now let's move on.
But no. This week the supposed big-momma of them all is heading our way, wreaking havoc through the Midwest and South while it gathers its arctic wrath to smite lonely little Broad Brook back into the stone age. This one is packing snow, sleet, and - my favorite since being trapped under five inches of ice in Des Moines, Iowa back in the winter of '90 - freezing rain.
I will be working from home, yet again, sitting here in my layers of flannel, fleece and smartwool, cooking shows in the background while I do whatever it is I do for money. Well, OK, that doesn't sound too bad. Hmmm... maybe I will make some hot chocolate after lunch.
I guess I could take pride in having lived through the snowiest January month in Connecticut history, with something like 50-plus inches. Connecticut has been around a long time, so that is saying something. But then again, enough already.
Maybe, just maybe, I will look back with nostalgia someday. I can see it now, a faraway look in my older, wiser eyes, as I gently tilt my head and say:
"Remember that one winter back when we lived in New England? You know, the one with all that snow? Jesus, that was a real bitch."
